Want to see the new Hobbit movie for free, my precious?
If you're an IT professional then Nimble Storage are offering you the chance to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug for free on two dates in December. One is the 18th (in London), the other is the 19th (in Manchester).
Follow this link to find out more: Nimble Storage Hobbit screening … [Read more...]

It's Friday and I just wanted to thank my colleague Darren (@dawoo) for the super stickers that he sent me recently in return for providing a quote on his website. I haven't decided where they're going to go yet - I'm trying to think of something a little more different than the lid of my laptop :-) … [Read more...]

Came across another strange issue in a production environment the other day that was also a bit of a facepalm monent.
Users of a private vCloud Director instance were complaining of issues with updating vApps - specifically around adding and managing assigned storage associated with these vApps. The errors presented within the vCloud interface were randomly brief and not a little vague - 'Details: Error, Status: Error' etc.
This error in the example was taken directly from the vCloud GUI, with no associated vSphere Tasks (that list being blank).
The error presented wether the vApp was running or stopped, and wether the VM concerned was running or stopped - each time it was the same.
Looking a little deeper into the vCloud logs … [Read more...]

Like many out there, I am upgrading my lab environment to the new vCloud Automation Center, since 5.2 was released. The installation process is a little different, and shows evidence of the transition from the old DynamicOps product to one more inline with the other vCloud Suite offerings.
I will write-up another post about the full installation of vCAC 5.2 in due course, but in the meantime this is a quick heads-up to make sure to read the requirements documents before completing the install.
vCould Automation Center 5.1 used to require DotNet 4.0 to be installed for Endpoint agents to run correctly. If you are in a lab environment and are happy to build and burn your existing vCAC deployment, then mostly an installation in situ will … [Read more...]

Registration is now open for the London VMUG Meeting on 4th July 2013!
As usual, it will be at the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (33 Queen Street, London, EC4R 1AP) between 8:30 and 17:00 and there will be vBeers afterwards.
The sponsors for this event are Atlantis Computing and Veeam.
What are you waiting for? Head over to the VMUG website, register and stick it in your calendar before someone sticks a different meeting in there!
Community Speakers:
• Fernando Frediani - Build Your Own Shared Storage
• Steve Bruck - SSO SOS
• Sam McGeown - PowerCLI Tips and Scripts
• Seb Hakiel - 4000-seat VDI Lessons
• Julian Wood - VDI roundtable Discussion
• Simon Gallagher - Hybrid vCloud Reaction
Sponsor Speakers:
• … [Read more...]

Are you based in the South West or the West of the England, or in South Wales or the borders area? If so, vSpecialist.co.uk wants to hear from you!
There has been much discussion recently about how VMware users and supporters in these areas can feed into the VMUG communities, and support the great work done by Aleric (@alaricdavies), Jane (@Rimmergram), Stuart (@Virtual_Stu) and Simon (@vinf_net) at the London VMUG.
We at vSpecialist, along with Simon Eady (@simoneady) are trying to gather details from locals in the South and West of England and Wales with a view to promoting the VMUG communities / groups, chatting with like minded professionals, enjoying a local #vBeers or 2 and maybe persuade more visitors to visit the London VMUG … [Read more...]

Recently, I have been doing lots with vCNS and manual creation / manipulation of vShield Edge devices (posts coming soon). One thing that drive me crazy is a tiny little thing that prompted me to write this quick Little Gem - 'Edge HA' sat on my to do list, and gloated at me.....
When creating a manual vShield Edge device in vCNS, there is the usual opportunity to create an pair of appliances for running the pair in High Availability mode. Trouble is, the options for deployment are limited and not very clear. (This might be clear / obvious to some, but weren't to me!)
When creating an HA pair, in the vShield Manager console editing the Edge device in question under Settings - the HA Configuration gives few options. Essentially, … [Read more...]

Having recently relocated my home office and my home lab within my house, I have set about rebuilding my lab from scratch. As it evolves or my needs change, a rebuild is good to purge out the remnants of the various experiments and tests that I've done. However, I will sometimes fall into the trap of trying to be too clever.
Take last night as an example. I happened to read about a piece of software called Cobbler. To save anyone having to read what is quite a lengthy man page, Cobbler manages the provisioning of operating systems from a single server. I thought it would be great if I could automate and control the complete rebuild of my entire lab from bare metal to fully functional at the touch of a few buttons with my QNAP NAS acting … [Read more...]

It's that time again. For the last few years Eric Siebert, over at vsphere-land.com, has organised a vote giving you, the readers of virtualization blogs, the opportunity to decide which you think is the best.
Jeremy and I run this site in our spare time because we want to but if you could see you way clear to voting for us, or any of you other favourite virtualization blogs, then you have our thanks.
Just hit the "vote" button to the left to be directed to the voting page, or click here. … [Read more...]

I've been playing with some of VMware's new products in my homelab, and have been using SQL Express 2008 R2 as part of the set-up / installations. In building and burning installs, I've often found the need to build and delete databases quickly.
Now - instead of using SQL Management Studio Express Edition to manage this (mostly DB drop) avtivity, I've found a much quicker method: Use SQLCMD.
To connect to a local SQL Express instance \SQLEXPRESS:
C:\sqlcmd -S.\SQLEXPRESS
To list existing databases within the default instance:
1> sp_databases
2> go
To 'use' a particular database (e.g. DISCO):
1> use DISCO
2> go
To delete a particular database (e.g. DISCO):
1> drop database [DISCO]
2> go
(with the last … [Read more...]